Former Detroit Red Wings star Brendan Shanahan recently talked about his part in the "Brawl in Hockeytown," on March 26, 1997, where he tackled Colorado Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy.
Shanahan addressed the incident in a reader mailbag for The Players' Tribune.
Recommended Videos
“It all happened pretty quickly,” Shanahan wrote. “I was locked up with Adam Foote, and I was watching Darren (McCarty) go after (Claude) Lemieux. And then, all of a sudden, I saw that Roy was skating full speed at Darren. He was gunning it. I managed to shake off Foote, and then I took off. The only thing I was thinking was, I got to get to him before he gets to Darren. And then, what’s funny is that I think Roy saw me coming and realized I would get to him before he could get to the scrum. I don’t know how I knew it, but I could tell he was going to jump. I just knew it. So we both just kind of coiled and jumped in the air at the same time."
After being tackled by Shanahan, Roy got up and started fighting Red Wings goalie Mike Vernon.
“It’s funny, the following year at the Olympics we were both playing for Team Canada, and Patrick (who I’ve really come to like and respect) told me that he had hurt his shoulder on that jump and that it hadn’t been the same since. I expressed my sympathy, but in my head what I was really thinking was, good.”
Shanahan was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2013. He played over 1,500 NHL games, scoring more than 600 goals. He won three Stanley Cups while playing for the Detroit Red Wings.